


Invisible Ink

by winter_dreaming



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Regency, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Flynn is so melodramatic, Flynn struggles with his feelings, History nerds in love, Hurt/Comfort, I struggled to find a nice way to combine Lucy and Flynn's names, Lucia - Freeform, Lucy's journal, bunker family, but that smirk tho, tragic backstory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-24 20:20:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14362896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter_dreaming/pseuds/winter_dreaming
Summary: Imagining Flynn and Lucy's (Lucia) back story, while also trying to be a little bit bolder with the effects of the changes they've made to time along the way.And of course, the journal.*** is my way of denoting that a chapter is still in progress, but I like to post to get momentum. If I wait for perfection...I'll never post.Guys, this just became a Jane Austen AU...not gonna lie, it's going to have a Mr. Garcy in it...If anyone has anything - prompts or otherwise that they'd like me to write about, feel free to reach out! I pretty much know where this story is going, but would happily write up things for others :)





	1. A Brief History of Time

"Are you sure you can trust that book?"

The hardest thing about time travel wasn't the fear of getting some godforsaken, long-eradicated disease, or dying face down in the mud four hundred years before you were ever born, or even the unhesitating murders committed for the greater good. 

It was the loneliness. 

Garcia Flynn remembered songs that had never been written, famous poets who would never see the light of day, cities whose skylines shifted with the blink of an eye. He unmade the world and had no one to share his burden with, no one who would understand. 

Except her. 

She'd saved him, woken him up, given him purpose, and doomed him all the same. Pretty good for a woman who looked as fragile as a daydream, like she'd crumble at the slightest provocation. He laughed to himself when he remembered how he'd dismissed her. She was steel. She was fire. She would never stop. 

She showed up at his doorstep to change his life right in the middle of the day. A bright, sunny afternoon, in his bright and sunny life. And he wrote her off. Thought she was crazy, running some kind of scam, some ridiculous nonsense about a conspiracy to remake the world, a shadowy organization devoted to the destruction of life as he knew it – as an NSA asset, he'd heard his fair share of ridiculous conspiracy theories – and finally, she'd threatened his wife and daughter. 

At least, that's what he thought she was doing when she mentioned Lorena and Iris. He yelled at her to get off his porch, slammed the door in her face and promptly forgot about all it. There's a version of him that warned Lorena, that took leave and bundled Iris in the car and just took them away. There's a version of himself that just sent them away, to his grandparents in Croatia, sent them to be safe. 

That version wasn't him. 

In reality, he ignored her, didn't even include the wild-eyed brunette's strange visit when he told 'Rena about his day, he picked Iris up from a sleep-over, absentmindedly listened to her prattle on, said he was too tired to read her a bedtime story, and retreated to their bedroom to read some stupid thriller he was absorbed in. 

_No goodnight._

_No I love you._

Then, they were dead. They were dead and she was there. She shot the assassin (she was an excellent shot then) and saved him. She grabbed his hand, she pulled him away from their bodies (it took a long time for him to forgive her) and they fled. 

He didn't trust the book. He trusted the woman and worshipped the book. 

His Bible, his map, his memento mori. 

His love. 

And his love had almost been killed by a stupid son of a bitch who believed that a) women concerted with the devil, and b) women who made a pact with Satan somehow had nothing better to do with that immense power than kill farm animals and hex their idiotic neighbors. 

Flynn cursed to himself as he buckled Lucy into the lifeboat, his mouth pressed into its customary grim line. Technically, that idiot had gotten her once, but the cut looked minor enough. Enough to be painful, but not enough to tear up the muscle underneath. Still…she looked terrible. Not that he looked much better, he supposed, winging through time and space in this pathetic rust bucket they called a time machine. 

They jolted into the present and his eyes drifted to her again. Here was the proving ground - when the lifeboat opened, would they see their (not friends, he bit down on the word that came naturally to his mind, they'd imprisoned him, tricked him, used him) _colleagues_ as they more or less were, or would they see a smoking crater of an American hellscape, or an empty field, or the barrel of a gun held by Rittenhouse agents. He held his breath and they emerged. 

Lucy went first, because of course she did, and he saw from her face that nothing fundamental had changed and that her soldier boy was there. Then her face changed. Merged into something sadder, but strong nonetheless. He was by her side without even thinking about it, took in the new blonde in the bunker – Wyatt's wife no doubt, and put his arm on her uninjured one to guide her down the steps. He couldn't help but shoot a disapproving look at him as they walked past. They didn't trust Flynn, and because of that they didn't work together very well as a group and if Wyatt had done his job and gone on the mission and protected 

_Her_

_History_

in the way he was supposed to, Lucy wouldn't have gotten hurt. Flynn was an assassin, he worked best alone or leading people who couldn't disobey or challenge him. He didn't fit here. 

Flynn slowly guided her to the few cots and medical supplies that comprised the bunker's medical unit. 

"We need to clean that wound." 

"I'll do it," she said softly, sitting down on the lumpy cot, the light streaming through the dirty paned glass making her seem even more wan. Even more alone. 

He felt suddenly superfluous in the room, too aware of his size, feeling clumsy and rough, knowing how much he towered over her. He didn't know what to do, how to comfort her, sure that touching her again would not go over well, since she'd only allowed his hand on her arm because her mind was elsewhere. 

As soon as she returned to herself, she'd never allow his touch. He swallowed and decided to leave her to her thoughts. 

"Laku noc," he murmured at the door and was gone. 

Flynn considered the bare walls of the seemingly converted janitorial closet that he was calling his bedroom these days. _Better then prison_ , he thought sourly. He sat on the edge of his own slightly less lumpy bed and closed his eyes, before his hand flew to the inner pocket of his jacket. He exhaled in relief and removed the contents – the journal. He knew it by heart as the dog-eared pages could testify but he read it over again for comfort. A salve. Lucy's history, her desperate record of history's linchpins, of a future and a past that could be better. Events he didn't remember, events that had never happened, would never happen without their help. She was a hell of a writer – he knew that, saw it during the Alamo, and - 

_"Well, Garcia, I always wanted to write the definitive American history –"_

He shook his head to clear it of the force of the memory. They'd been in bed together, her playing her hands across the scars on his body. That was a different Lucy, _his_ Lucy, his mind corrected before he grudgingly acknowledged that he thought of all the versions of Lucy he'd encountered over the years as his. She was the only thing he had left. The mercs he'd worked with in the past, even Anthony, weren't his. He paid them, promised them they could save their loved ones from dying, bring them a cure for cancer, guilted them into submission, whatever he could to get them to commit to his cause. He lied. 

When Lucy had first brought him back to her base, he was a widower, a grieving father. She'd installed him in a room, similar to this one actually, gave him a bottle of his favorite whiskey, and said she'd see him in 24 hours. When he finally sobered up at around hour 21, his room destroyed, knuckles bleeding, she entered his room and sat on the floor close to the door. He hadn't wept, rage and booze had carried him through, but he wept then, when he turned and saw her face. The concern he saw there broke him and he sank to his knees on the grimy floor. She scooted over and put her arms around him as he sobbed off and on for the next three hours. When the sobs tapered off, and he was ready to wipe his eyes and stammer some kind of apology for her now-wet shirt, she tipped his chin up and fixed her brown eyes on his. 

_"I told you I'd see you in 24 hours. Welcome to the team."_

She'd assembled a motely crew of Rittenhouse refugees- royalty like her, who hated the mission of their family, some of her history students, the odd member of the military, and even a few intelligence analysts. He was her second NSA asset as he found out that day. She inspired loyalty and trust in everyone she met. She did not coerce them. She didn't need to. That was another quality that carried through to every version that he'd seen, making it especially hard to come up against her before she'd…joined his side in this present. Before he'd joined hers? 

Her past selves would be giving him a verbal ass kicking for all the times he'd let her escape or choked in her presence, but he couldn't help it. He'd told Anthony and others that there would be casualties but he would never allow her to be one of them. She who'd helped him become so strong was now his weakness. Logically, in this timeline he should have already killed her a hundred times over – kill Rufus, kill her. Wyatt was…what he was. Unessential. Without Lucy, even if their team had gotten to the past they wouldn't have had any idea beyond some hurried Wikipedia searches, what might be important or how to survive. But he hadn't. Sitting here now, in this damp, dingy room, he was glad of it. God had led him to her, he was sure of it. In every world, he was led to every version of her. Was he such a man to go against God? 

He lay on his side, journal in his hands, and fell asleep.


	2. Fever pitch

He woke up some hours later after a dreamless, exhausted sleep. It was early morning, too early for even Agent Christopher and Wyatt to be up doing their physical training before cups of mediocre bunker coffee. He took advantage of the solitude to take a long, scalding shower and throw on some clean clothes. When he exited the bathroom, he could hear the sounds of sparring, right on schedule. He glanced toward the door of Lucy's room – closed, probably still resting. He put her from his mind, went back to his room, and perused one of the many history books Lucy had gathered together, comparing events and people to the journal. No one could replace Lucy's historical genius, but he could damn well make sure he wasn't slouching in that department either. 

He looked at his watch, a silly sort of accessory now, but he was surprised to see that five hours had gone by. He made himself a functional if unappealing sandwich, exchanged pleasantries with Jiya, (she was the only one besides Lucy who treated him as a person, the others regarded him more or less as a loaded gun- a weapon to be used, dangerous to everyone, even the person who held it), and went back to his studies. 

"Dad?" 

He started awake, swearing at himself, pulse racing. _Iris is dead,_ he told himself firmly. 

_Dead is dead...for now._

7 pm. He looked at the now empty plate and wondered if he could just wait the rest of the group out in case Jiya wasn't there. His stomach growled. 

"Screw it," he said and made for the kitchen. Maybe Lucy would be there. 

He walked in on some kind of card game between Mason, Wyatt, Rufus, and Jiya. Wyatt's undead wife was nowhere to be seen, and Christopher was off doing…whatever she did. Well, at least he wouldn't have to look at the woman who betrayed him while he ate, he thought morosely and honestly didn't know if he was referring to Christopher, or to Lucy. He rooted around in the fridge when a strain of conversation from the card game drifted over. 

_…haven't seen her since Salem_

"Sorry, what?" he said, turning around sharply. 

Jiya repeated herself. "I said, I haven't seen Lucy since Salem. She must be really tired." 

"Tired?" Flynn repeated. "Has anyone seen her since Salem?" 

"Calm down, Flynn," Mason said sounding bored. "With all this –" he nodded toward Wyatt, who flushed guiltily "going on, I can't imagine she's eager to, well, you know. Anyway, I'm on a winning stre–" 

Flynn ignored him. "Has _anyone_ seen her since Salem?" One by one the group shook their heads. 

He ran to her room and tossed open the door – empty, her bed still made. 

"What the hell, man, you just can't go barging into peoples' rooms like that!" Rufus exclaimed. 

Flynn turned, showed him the empty room and sprinted for the infirmary. The door was shut and his mouth went dry. He licked his lips and knocked on the door lightly. 

"Lucy?" he called. Wyatt ran up behind him as he gently tried the door again. Not locked, but blocked somehow. He tried to push the door open further and heard a meaty thud. 

"I'm kicking it down," Wyatt said, and Flynn grabbed him by the shoulders and tossed him back. 

"She's the one blocking the door, you idiot! If you break it down you'll break her ribs, and God knows what else!" 

Flynn continued to gently push the door open until he had enough room to squeeze through. It wasn't as bad as he'd feared. She _was_ still alive, her thin frame rising and falling with her shallow breaths. He turned her over to pick her up and her skin was burning. The wound on her arm was angry, with red tendrils snaking their way down to her fingertips and across her chest. He knew the rest of the group was talking, shouting, but he just blocked it out, focusing on her gentle breathing. 

He moved her back to the cot and looked through the shelves until he found the IV bag marked as saline and some spare needles. 

"Get something to hang this on," he said and deftly moved the needle beneath her skin. Wyatt found an IV pole in the corner of the room and snapped the bag into place. 

"What, what do we do now?" Rufus stuttered. 

"Now, we find some antibiotics," Flynn said rummaging through the boxes. "No, no, yes, this one should do – Rocephin. We need to infuse it." 

"I'll do it," Wyatt said. 

Flynn stood up, looming over the other man. "If you think that I'll trust this to the _idiot_ who didn't notice that she didn't need food or water for almost 24 hours…you are sorely mistaken," he growled. Wyatt stepped back. 

"Wyatt? Honey?" 

Wyatt exhaled and ran his hands through his hair. "I'm in here, Jess!" 

"Maybe you should attend to your wife," Flynn suggested pointedly. 

"Sweetie?" 

"Yeah, I'm coming!" Wyatt called. 

Can you give us some air here?" Flynn said, looking at Jiya and Rufus. 

"Uhh…sure…shout if you need anything." Jiya tugged on Rufus's elbow to lead him out of the room. 

"You really trust him alone with her?" he heard Rufus say from the hallway. 

"Just hang on, Lucy," Flynn said. 

She looked more dead than alive now, despite the IV. Her lips had a bluish tint and her skin was still on fire. 

"Just hang on."

He used to watch 'Rena sleep, loving the look of contentment on her face, her long tousled hair – the beautiful bane of her existence she declared it once – he watched her sleep and marveled at how he managed to trick the most beautiful woman he ever knew into loving him. She'd catch him sometimes, of course, she was no fool, she'd see him admiring her and pull him close. 

They joked that she should have been a Marine- Iris came home from day care and everyone including him was hacking up a lung? Not Rena. She'd be cheerful, making everyone soup and hurrying them off to bed. Opportunity to go sky diving? Rena was already there planning the training needed to be an instructor. Tattoos across her body, a drunken whim that turned into a lifetime passion? Definitely Rena. She broke her ankle once (cliff diving, because of course she was) and she didn't mention it for two hours until it had swollen beyond recognition. 

"Stop making such a fuss! Get me some aspirin and I'll be fine," she exclaimed in absolute seriousness. "Besides, pain is just weakness leaving the body," she added and saluted with mock solemnity. He remained unconvinced. 

"Duso moja, I'm fine," she said slapping his forearm lightly. "Aspirin...and tequila to wash it down," she commanded loftily. 

"Semper fi," he laughed and brought her the largest margarita he could find. 

She told stories from that vacation: the beautiful scenery, the cliff diving, the local arts and crafts…and the hangover she'd gotten from that absolutely terrible tequila – _really Garcia, I'm surprised they don't strip paint with that vile liquid_ — and somehow the broken ankle never came to her mind. She always leaped first and thought second and maybe that’s how he tricked her. She leaped into his arms and by the time she'd been able to think about it, he'd already made it clear that he'd never let her go. 

"Don't go," he said softly and jumped up from the uncomfortable chair he'd been occupying at her bedside as someone cleared their throat behind him. 

"Whoa, I am so sorry!" Jiya apologized startling backwards in response to his abrupt movement. 

"What…is it?" he asked when his heart stopped racing. 

"I just…uh…sorry, I wanted to tell you that Agent Christopher has a doctor coming by but she can't get here until the morning." 

"The morning?! Are you crazy?! What happened to the doctor that saw you?" 

"Flynn! Keep your voice down!" she whispered urgently looking over at Lucy. "The other guy is out of town at a conference." 

"Well, apologies to Agent Christopher's traveling physician but that's just not good enough," he said scraping his hand across his stubble. 

Jiya looked at him for a moment and narrowed her eyes. "I guess it's not." 

"Good," he said relieved. 

Jiya looked back at the open door, looked at him, looked at Lucy, and shut the door slowly, a strange and unplaceable expression on her face. Flynn immediately prepared to fight for his life, cursing himself for falling for her scientist routine, thinking that she actually thought well of him _She would be Rittenhouse, she would be, she would be._

"I have to admit that I like the Kyle Reese –Sarah Connor thing as much as the next person, but-" 

"Kyle –who?" 

She was wide-eyed. "Are you kidding me? You're kidding me. You're a timetraveller and you don't know who- you know what, forget it. You can atone for your sins against time travel-related pop culture later." 

He dropped his stance as the conversation spiraled desperately away from what he'd imagined. 

She continued. "Does she know?" 

"Know what? What the hell are you talking about?" 

"That you're in love with her?" 

He stopped dead as his eyes flicked over to make sure Lucy was still sleeping. "Get out." 

She ignored him and nodded, taking his seat next to Lucy. "So, she doesn't. Good." She waited. "Are you gonna sit or what?" 

Flabbergasted, he sat in the room's only other chair, which was unshockingly, even more uncomfortable than the last. 

"Lucy is my friend," she said simply. "I never had many girlfriends growing up. I was always, well, always hanging out with guys like Rufus. Well, there's no one like Rufus, but you know what I mean," she smiled. "Physics, engineering, math – not many women in those fields at the moment and Mason industries wasn't exactly an exception." She shook her head. "Lucy is my friend and the last thing she needs right now is yet another guy who tells her that he loves her, when he really means that she'll do until his dead wife gets back." 

"Don't you think I know that!?" he hissed and immediately regretted the loss in temper. He took a couple of deep breaths and looked toward Lucy again. "Don't you think I know that?" he repeated calmly. "Why do you think I haven't…" he trailed off, swallowed the words. 

"Honestly?" she asked. "Mainly because it's a little difficult to fit in a box of chocolate and a happy hour invite in between all the trying to kill her." 

"Stop right there," he said and stood up, suddenly furious. "Just wait one second. _Kill_ her?" he pointed toward the cot. "You think I would _ever_ hurt her? Jiya, I could have snapped her neck with my bare hands a hundred times by now. If I were going to, she'd be dead. Trust me." 

"Uhh, okay, creepy much?" 

"Jiya, I –" he sputtered to a stop. "I had a choice – shoot through Lucy and most likely kill her, and probably kill Rittenhouse where it began…" he stopped again. "And I couldn't. I couldn't shoot her." He grimaced at the thought of it, "I couldn't. I had a choice between saving the world and hurting her and-" he caught himself. "Let's just say that I saved her ass more times that she knows." 

"Lucy did the same for you, did you know that?" she said softly. "Rufus told me all about it," she chuckled bitterly. "All the time Wyatt had you in his sights, had the killing shot, and Lucy wouldn't let him take it. She could have ended you and you would have never seen it coming." 

"What?" he rasped. All the while he'd been trying to protect her…she'd been lowering Wyatt's arm, stepping in front of a scope, believing there was more to him. Something worth saving. Could she…? He felt panicked, ashamed- she was looking out for him and he'd forced her into the mothership, dragged her along the ground, terrified her, and kept her at a distance with his sarcasm. If their positions had been reversed, she wouldn't have let his wound get septic, she would have thought of some way out of it, he failed her, she'd been protecting him and he failed her and the thought of that propelled him to grab Jiya by the shoulders, not waiting for her answer. 

"So, so what am I supposed to do now, huh? You here to tell me that I'm dangerous and that I need to stay away from her? In case you hadn't noticed, we're all starring in the latest hit reality TV show: Time Traveling Bunker Family and I don't exactly have any other place I can go." He pushed her back, suddenly disgusted with himself and the look of fear rising on Jiya's face. 

"Flynn, that's not what I mean. I just want you to be –" 

He smirked. "Be careful? Thanks, mom." She laid her hand on his arm to still him. 

"To be sure. I want you to be sure. I want you to know what you'd do if Christopher walked in _that_ door right now and said your family is here." He swallowed. 

"Because if she said that _Lucy's_ sister was back, there'd be some tears and some hugging and some wine and then Lucy would put her to work helping to save the world. She would stay. Because that's who she is. It's not right or wrong or smart, it's just who she is. So, be sure that she's not just some temporary consolation prize." She looked him in the eyes again. "If you can't do that, then just be her friend. God knows we could all use more of those around here." 

They heard a indistinct murmur come from the cot. "I'll check on that doctor," Jiya said and made for the door. 

"Jiya, don't-" he gestured helplessly to the rest of the bunker. "Forget it, tell whoever you want." 

She opened the door. "Tell them what?" and left. 

He sank into the chair by Lucy's cot again, suddenly exhausted. 

"Oh and Flynn?" 

"Jesus, Jiya, what?" 

"Watch Terminator, T2, skip the other movies and go straight to the Sarah Connor Chronicles." 

Garcia Flynn, assassin and timetraveler, was left open-mouthed in surprise again.


	3. Fever dream

__

_Be sure_

__

Your family is here 

__

Papa? 

__

Duso moja 

__

_Be sure_

Lucy stirred on the thin cot, the windows casting striped shadows across her body. He sank down in the chair beside her, glancing back at the door to ensure that Jiya hadn't popped back in. Lucy's color was no better and while he knew that the meds weren't supposed to be instantaneous he examined it again, double-checking the dosage, willing it to work faster, do more. 

When he looked up again, Lucy's eyes were on him. His breath caught in his throat. 

"Wyatt?" she slurred. 

He grimaced. "I'll get him," he said as his heart sank. A tug on his hand stopped him, Lucy's small hand clumsily hooking onto two of his fingers. 

"Wyatt," she said more clearly, though it seemed to cost her. 

He placed his other hand over hers and tried to comfort her. "I'm going to get him, Lucy. He'll be right here." 

"Don't…Wyatt," she said, and moved the hand with the IV awkwardly toward the door. 

"I'm not Wyatt," he said slowly. "Flynn," he said and pointed to himself. "I'll go get Wyatt." He tried to smile reassuringly, prepared himself for the look of disappointment or fear that would cross her face once she processed who he was. Prepared for her to need comfort from someone else, for Captain delta-force to sweep across the room and make her feel better. For a moment. Before the specter of Wyatt's wife reemerged, before the reality of this world kicked in and she got hurt again. 

She tried again, her eyes pinned to his, flashing like diamonds in her fever. "Flynn," she coughed. "Don't. Don't let…Wyatt…in -" she gestured to the room, "he-here," she finished, panting with exertion. 

"Why?" He asked but she was out of breath and quickly faded to an uneasy sleep. He checked the IV again, found the saline was almost done and switched it out for another to keep her hydrated. Now, he would just have to wait, something he did spectacularly poorly these days. He couldn't bring himself to pace, couldn't do anything besides sit and watch her sleep, or read the journal. So that's what he did. 

"Flynn…" she murmured, her eyes hazy, unfocused. 

"Yes? I'm here, Lucy." 

"Will you…stay with me?" 

"Always," he said without thinking. 

She smiled faintly. 

"I mean, as long as you want me…to, as long as you want me to," he quickly corrected, but she had already fallen asleep again. 

_Was that my answer? Is that what I would do?_ he wondered. 

'Rena was the impulsive one; she used to make fun of Flynn's neverending lists – the neat lines of paper each day that provided an orderly structure to their life. He was the planner, the strategist, methodical to an infuriating degree. And yet here he was. The words that came from his heart, the things he felt without having to mull it over from every angle, weighing the pros and cons…these impulses… _Be sure_ he thought. He didn't know if he'd ever be sure about his heart again. 

When he woke up, he became aware of two things simultaneously. 

One: his back was killing him. Two: Lucy's fingers were in his hair, just stroking it lightly. Of course he had fallen asleep leaning forward in that damn chair but her soft touch felt like heaven so he just lay there, back screaming for relief, and yet utterly content. Loathe to move to even breathe differently for fear she'd know he had woken up and that whatever -sickness or pity - had possessed her to do this, would disappear. She gently coiled some strands around her fingers and released them, then hissed in pain. 

He sat up. "What is it?" 

She'd pulled out the IV. 

"Okay, okay, I got it." He stood up to grab the box of needles, opened another sterile packet and reinserted one. She let out a small moan of pain. "Sorry, sorry." 

A few breaths went by and she relaxed back onto the pillow. 

"Catching up on some reading?" she rasped, a glimmer of humor in her eyes. 

"What?" He looked at the journal. "Oh, this?" he smiled awkwardly and stretched to relieve some of the tension in his back. 

"Doesn't look like it'll make the Times list." 

He grinned. "If you're feeling well enough to be a smartass, then-" 

"Tell me about it." 

He faltered. "Tell you about…the journal?" 

She nodded, stopping to catch her breath again. 

"There's quite a lot of tell, Lucy," he drawled. "Do you have any specific questions in mind?" 

"Why didn't I leave it to myself?" She absentmindedly caressed the worn cover and he was suddenly flooded a curious doubling of his memories - realizing just how different the woman in front of him was from the woman he had known. That Lucy did not touch things gently, with curiosity, as extensions of her mind. She furiously wrote in the journal and put it away until it was useful again. 

"I don't know, Lucy. You didn't tell anyone everything. Not even me." 

"And I would have told you…because…we were…close." She stumbled over the last word. 

He swallowed. "Yes." 

"How close?" she pressed him. 

He cleared his throat and unnecessarily rearranged some of the IV tubing to give his hands something, anything to do. "I told you before that we made, will make a good team. But, you know what, you're feeling better and I should get the others - they'll want to see you." He made as if to go. 

"No," she said and touched his hand again. "What does that mean? We were like brother and sister, like family, comrades in arms, were we…a couple?" Spots of bright red appeared on her cheeks and she ducked his gaze. 

He went still. This was the conversation he'd been running from and running toward since he saw her around the Hindenburg. He'd wanted to run to her, grab her and kiss her, kiss her a thousand times, laugh, shout they they'd done it, her bizarre plan had worked and…then he understood that she was part of a team trying to stop him. Not Rittenhouse, they were too…collaborative for that, but something else. He saw her and his heart healed and broke in the same moment. Now, the words stuck in his throat and he seemed frozen to the spot, but she read the truth in his pained silence anyway. 

She clasped both her hands over her mouth in shock. "We slept together?!" 

"You're lucky my pride is so unshakeable, Lucy, otherwise I might be offended by your look of abject horror," he said lightly when he'd recovered his voice. 

"Oh, this is bad. This is really bad," she said to herself, cheeks flaming. She couldn't help herself- always the scientist, always the historian putting pieces of a story together. "Why? Why would we ever do that?" 

He sought refuge in humor and looked her deeply in the eyes. "Well, you see, Lucy, when two people love each other very much – " 

She cut him to the quick again. "So, we were in love?" 

He stuttered to a halt. 

She pulled herself up to a sitting position with a grimace. "You know what? I apologize. I have no right to pry into your," she waved the hand without the IV in it, "personal life and I'm sorry. You must have really…" she paused and tears pricked at her eyes for a moment before she blinked them away and smiled. "She must have been really something special." 

"Lucy, I –" 

"It's okay. I'm feeling a bit better so I think I'm going to get some sleep. Thank you for staying when I asked earlier." She turned on her side toward the wall, arm with the IV resting awkwardly on her hip. 

He knew a dismissal when he saw one, after all, he was quite the expert in them. In the calculated jibe, the sarcastic bon mot. Lucy's natural kindness and her understandable discomfort with his feelings had given him the perfect out. He could take it, walk out the door, send Jiya in to check on her, and go on pretending that he wasn't feeling what he felt, wasn't thinking what he thought. An easy out.

"Fuck it," he said out loud. 

"What?" she asked, half turning to him. 

He picked up the folding chair and scooted it closer to her before sitting down in it. He took a deep breath. "Yes, I was in love with her. You were…" 

"Not me," she interrupted fiercely. She sat back up and spun to face him, pulling out the IV again. "Don't you dare. That woman you talk about is _not_ me." 

"Lucy, you're bleeding." 

"It's fine, Flynn. Just go," she hissed, so close to him now, close enough to see the thin ring of green around her pupils. Close enough to kiss. His eyes dropped of their own accord to her lips and she tracked the movement, scooting back as if burned by his proximity. She grabbed the IV and tried to reattach it but her hands were shaking too much. "Stupid thing," she muttered angrily. 

"Lucy, stop." 

She ignored him and tried again, failing. She tossed the needle to the side and covered her face with her hands, her shoulders heaving up and down. She was either going to cry or kill him. 

She removed her hands and looked at him. 

_Maybe both_ , he assessed suddenly and he was unsure of where her anger was coming from. "Lucy, I know I'm not Wyatt but – " 

"Screw Wyatt. And screw you, too. You and he are the same, do you get that?" 

"Lucy, I don't understand-" 

"You are the _same_. You both love someone who doesn't exist. Except Wyatt's got you beat, I guess, doesn't he?" she chuckled humorlessly. "She came back and she's exactly the woman he loved back then. But I'm here and I've just got her face and you're stuck with it. For now." She scrubbed her eyes viciously with the back of her hand, smearing a thin trickle of blood across her face. 

"What do you want from me, Flynn?" she asked abruptly. "Do you want to just swap me in for her? A plug and play brunette? Is that it? Is that why you're here now, what all your hinting about the journal has been about? Replace your Lucy-shaped toy until you can catch up to her in the right timeline?" 

He held her wrists gently, but firmly in his left hand and cupped her cheek with his right. He carefully wiped away the traces of blood as he considered what to say. 

"Don't look at me like that," she said, tears of anger he saw now streaming down her face. "Don't you _dare_ look at me like you—" 

He swept his thumb slowly across her delicate cheekbone as he looked into her eyes. "Like I love you?" he supplied and smiled sadly. "I'm afraid I don't have any other way to look at you." 

She slumped back against the concrete wall away from his touch. 

"I don't know what the right timeline is, Lucy. I just know how you make me feel. Here and now. Personally, I think any straight, single guy who spends any time with you and doesn't fall in love with you is either an idiot or a sociopath. And I'm no idiot," he said, hoping for at least a smile. She just remained staring off into space, a miserable, hollow-eyed look on her face. "But you're right about me loving a different version of you first." 

"Tell me," she said dejectedly. 

"How about you let me fix that," he pointed to her hand, "and I'll give you the whole story. Deal?" 

She nodded and he climbed up on the cot next to her, sitting shoulder to shoulder against the cold concrete. He wasn't sure he could do this looking in her eyes. He reached across her lap and fixed the IV. "Third time's the charm," he whispered in her ear and tried not to hold onto her hand for too long. His long legs dangled over the edge of the cot and he realized this was destined to be a day of uncomfortable furniture. 

"Tell me…tell me about…her." 

_Be sure_

"She was very different than you. Harder, colder. Vicious, even. She had to be. No sentiment. She made people useful and then used them. If she had a choice between saving the world and saving someone she loved, well, she picked the world every time and people loved her just the same. They knew that they might get left to die because of it and followed her all the same. She sacrificed everything she ever loved to save the world." 

"She didn't sacrifice you, apparently." 

"No, she…" he cleared his throat. "She…she never loved me." He sensed Lucy's surprise next to him, could feel her looking at his profile and he resolutely stared across the room at a pile of medical supplies. "Well, she loved me as much as she could love anyone. Not her fault, of course, I have it on great authority that I _am_ eminently loveable and am definitely ticking all the boxes in the tall, dark, and handsome categories." He felt her smile and that encouraged him onward. 

"She had grown up in Rittenhouse. Her parents hadn't wanted her to suffer the way they had suffered when they learned about the organization and its mission in their college years. The doubt, the fear. So they raised their child in Rittenhouse – elementary school, high school, and a small, private college essentially controlled by them. I believe she was raised on the East Coast somewhere, though she never said for sure. I became her lieutenant in the war on Rittenhouse and fell in love with her. She and I were lovers but she loved one person in the world and it certainly wasn't me." He risked a look at her. 

"Amy," she murmured. 

He nodded. "She loved her sister so much that she forced them to break with everything they'd known – Rittenhouse, plans to rule time and the world, and they ran. Her sister was being put in danger, I was never clear what the story was and neither she nor Amy would talk about it. But she had already done so much work for Rittenhouse in her role as the lead historian on the Clockmaker project. She'd managed to pinpoint linchpins in time, people and events that could be nudged into compliance- she recorded them and mapped out the consequences in her journal." Lucy let out a small gasp. 

"She'd already tested one of these linchpins with her childhood friend Emma," Lucy gasped again as he continued, "who was the first Mason Industries pilot. She and Emma noted that they could dramatically increase the possibility of turning Lincoln to Rittenhouse, if they already recruited Johnson and Seward, so they did so when both men were in their teens, and noted those changes. Then, they went back to stop John Wilkes Booth. When they returned to their present, Lincoln had never been assassinated. He'd become president for life until he was taken ill with and eventually died of tuberculosis in the spring of 1885. Unfortunately for Rittenhouse, the abolitionist movement in the North was already too strong, so history continued much as it did before. The journal is full of those linchpins," he said gesturing to it. 

"You said she sacrificed everything…" Lucy began, a look of horror dawning on her face. 

"She gambled everything on a final play, made the choice, knowing that there was a high probability that she, her sister, her lover, and her group of Rittenhouse refugees wouldn't survive. She chose." 

"No, no, no," Lucy repeated desperately. "You're lying, I would never do that to Amy!" she said frantically and tried to get off the cot away from him. He put his hands on her shoulders, holding her in place. 

"You didn't," he said. " _She_ did." 

Lucy tried to shake him off, swiveled on the cot to struggle with him face to face, calling him a liar, calling him a monster, and he simply held her arms out so she couldn't strike him and waited for her to get it out of her system. After a few minutes of particularly colorful obscenities, she began to sob and he felt the tension in her arms relax. Still side by side, he gathered her against him, wrapped his arms around her as she collapsed onto his chest, still crying. He closed his eyes and gently kissed her forehead. 

"Tiho, tiho," he murmured into her hair. "Tiho, sve je u redu." 

He saw the door open a crack and caught a glimpse of Jiya. She peered in to check on them and took in the scene as Flynn brought his finger to his lips. She understood and backed out quietly, reassuring people outside the door. 

"Tiho, moja ljubav," he sighed. 

Her cries gradually tapered off and the room grew quiet. Nothing echoed except for the sounds of their breathing and the drip, drip, drip of the room's only sink. 

"I should have told you all of this earlier, Lucy," he whispered, stroking her hair. "I never meant to hurt you. I just got so angry. We won, your plan won, and I saw you and…you don't know what it's like to look someone you…love in the eyes and to have them not know you. Each time you didn't know me as anything more than Flynn, domestic terrorist, I got more desperate. More angry. So I held the journal over you because I didn't…I was afraid to tell you the truth. I am _so_ sorry." 

"You're wrong," she suddenly said. "I _do_ know what it's like. My mother…before we jumped that first time, she was ill. She stopped knowing who I was in her early fifties. She stopped recognizing Amy in her late forties. We just thought she was overworked, not sleeping well, slips of the tongue. But we got to a point where we looked into her eyes and all the love and history we had was just…gone. Blank." She pulled herself back to look at him, her eyes blotchy with emotion. "It's hell." 

"But I'm not that person," she continued, idly straightening the fabric of his collar. She sighed, tucking her head under his chin. "You're in love with a stranger with my face and you want me to be her and I'm not. I'm just me." 

"Lucy, I don't want you to be _anyone_ other than who you are right now, in this moment. You love so fiercely," he smiled. "You care so much about other people – when you have to choose between saving the world and the people you love, you figure it out and find a third option because for you, the people you love _are_ the world. When…she left Rittenhouse, she killed her way through history when a person couldn't be recruited to her cause. It was easier. Cleaner. She taught me that. She killed anyone that stood in her way and she felt no remorse." Lucy stirred against him. 

"She didn't get pleasure from it, I don’t mean she was a psychopath or anything," he assured her, "but she…everything was less important than her mission to save the world. And as for me, I loved a person who never loved me back. Who couldn't. Having even just the small part of her that I did was better than having everything of somebody else. I don't regret it." 

Lucy tucked herself even more tightly against him. 

"When I saw what you were like here – passionate and loving and empathetic. A real leader…brilliant and creative," he said wistfully, smiling at some memory. "Loyal, kind, willing to sacrifice for others…well, I never stood a chance." 

"So what do we do now?" she asked, her voice muffled against his shirt, her breath hot against his neck. He closed his eyes. _Be sure_

"What do you want, Lucy?" he asked, trying to make it seem like this wasn't _the _question for him, one of the few that mattered.__

__She pulled back to look at him, wide-eyed, still red from her tears. She hesitantly extended a trembling hand to cup his cheek, and he couldn't help it, he closed his eyes and leaned into her palm, covered her hand with his to savor the touch, the scent of lotion (applied prior to the idiots of Salem, no doubt) and the feeling that she, that _this_ Lucy was doing this. __

___"I want you to be happy," she said softly. "Not happy _enough_. You deserve to have more than scraps of affection from someone you loved. I want you to be really happy. I mean, the world could end any day, Flynn. We should be happy while we can." A far-away look drifted into her eyes before she refocused on him. ___

___"Jiya noted that we don't really have time to…get to know each other in between all the time travel and imminent death," he observed._ _ _

___"Jiya said that?" she exclaimed._ _ _

___He rushed onward, "so maybe, we could go for drinks and movie sometime?" he offered slyly._ _ _

___She grinned, playing along. "So, you're gonna take me out for beers some night. And the latest action move?"_ _ _

___"Art house cinema, please, Lucy," he mock admonished her._ _ _

___"Just nothing sci-fi," they said in unison and laughed together._ _ _

___Her laughter broke the barrier between them. "I trusted you," she suddenly said. "Right away. At the Hindenburg. I had no reason to trust you, in fact I had a million great reasons _not_ to trust you…but I saw you and…felt…" she trailed off. _ _ _

__"Felt what?" he said and risked opening his eyes and he felt burned by the compassion he saw there. Compassion was not love, was not desire. He wanted both. He wanted her._ _

__"I feel like a total idiot saying this but…I don't love you, Flynn. You know that, right?"_ _

__He froze, but what did he expect- she only found out about his feelings ten minutes ago. "Do you think you…" he cleared his throat, "ever could?" Her eyes widened again and this time he pulled back, away from his open desire, his hope, his exposed wound, his bleeding heart. This time _he_ was the one to blush, embarrassed and made as if to go but she held him in place with the weight of her body and the tender touch of her hand. __

___"I don’t know," she answered honestly. "At the Hindenburg… I saw you and I trusted you completely. I've never felt that way before. About anyone. I felt like…I'd been waiting for you." She inched closer to him on the cot._ _ _

___"Lucy, it's fine-" he began, before she kissed him. Searchingly, testing it, trying the feeling of her lips on his and he restrained himself as long as he could against her before he gave himself over completely, pulled her into his lap, breathless in the taste of her, the feel of her against his chest._ _ _

___When they broke apart, she seemed shaken, but sad. "What if I can't love you?" she whispered._ _ _

___"Honestly, Lucy, I don't give a fuck," he responded, and pulled her in again._ _ _

___A throat cleared from the doorway._ _ _

___"Agent Christopher!" Lucy exclaimed, hurriedly wiping her lips. "Uhh…what is it?"_ _ _

___"When you're quite done," she said sourly._ _ _

___"What is it?" Lucy asked._ _ _

___"England. 1795. A place called…Steventon," she said uncertainly. "You have any idea why they would jump there?"___


	4. Delirium

"Steventon?" Lucy repeated slowly as Mason bustled into the room looking for his usual hangover remedy. 

"Oh, Lucy, you're up. Good, now can you hand me that black bottle by your right arm?" 

Flynn scowled, grabbed the bottle and tossed it to him. 

"You two are awfully cozy in here," Mason observed when he'd taken his cure. 

"Focus, Mason," Christopher ordered. "Steventon, England, 1795." 

"Steventon, that's in the boonies of...my god…Hampshire, isn't it?" he asked. 

"Looks like," Christopher said, handing over the coordinates. 

"Ugh," he shuddered. "Give me London, Paris, Berlin, any day over that hotbed of sheep and gossip." 

"Some strategic historical something something, key to the something victory?" Jiya chimed in from the doorway as Agent Christopher moved to block her view of Flynn and Lucy. 

"Oooh, ooh, I got this one!" Rufus exclaimed from next to Jiya, oblivious to everything else as he entered. "War of 1812!" 

"Unless I'm mistaken," Flynn drawled, nonchalantly getting up from the cot and standing by the door, "that was in 1812." He tried to catch Lucy's eye, but she was studiously watching a spot on the floor, color gone from her face again. 

Rufus scowled. "You know what I mean. Rittenhouse tackling yet another edition of VH1's 'Before they were stars.' Some famous general or something?" he directed the last to Lucy. 

She looked up at the question though not at him, her eyes dead, her voice flat. "Could be," she said and returned to looking at the ground. Jiya turned to Flynn, silent anger written across her features, and he returned it with a shrug of genuine confusion. _What the hell just happened?_

Suddenly Agent Christopher laughed from the door. "That would be so funny," she chuckled to herself. 

"What?" Rufus asked. 

"No, it couldn't be." 

"Do feel free to enlighten us any time it seems convenient," Flynn said with an edge. _Why won't she look at me?_

"Steventon. 1795." Christopher repeated slowly. 

"Yeah, that's means exactly as much to me as it did two seconds ago…which is still nothing," Rufus said. 

Christopher spun to Lucy and Flynn. "Are you serious? I know this and you guys don't?" She narrowed her eyes at Lucy, who remained focused on the floor. "Huh. Steventon at least until 1801 or so, is where Jane Austen lived and wrote. She was born there." 

"Jane Austen?" Jiya said. " _The_ Jane Austen? Colin Firth-transparent-shirt-Keira Knightley-spinning-dances-Jane-Austen?" she squealed. 

Christopher cleared her throat disapprovingly. "I believe she wrote a book or two as well, Jiya." 

"How do you know this?" Rufus asked suspiciously. 

"What? I can't have hobbies?" 

"More importantly," Flynn broke in, "Does your enthusiasm for this unexpected hobby entail appropriate clothing we could borrow?" 

"Oh, much to my wife's neverending concern, it does. Big time," she grinned. 

Suddenly, Lucy was back. Her sharp intelligence, her determination. "Well, there we go," she said standing up with a wince, looking only at Christopher. "Maybe they want to stop the rise of female authors, or maybe something to do with the development of the novel as a genre, or maybe Jay's Treaty, who knows, but," she smiled, "we're gonna get the mothership back either way. So, Jiya and Rufus we need you, Christopher, you'll come with us –" 

"Wait, wait, wait – as what? Don't get me wrong, Lucy, I love the period…from a distance. From the distance of 2018 where I don't have to pretend to be…what? Someone's nurse from the 'subcontinent'? From the West Indies? To move through this society, freely and quietly, you need to be white. Or a servant." She made as if to leave when Rufus grabbed her arm. 

"I'm sorry, how many times have I been a slave?" Rufus said angrily. "Been called 'boy' or worse? Run from people who didn't view me as human, who would have gladly murdered me for existing, for drinking from the wrong fucking water fountain? Suck it up. Does anybody know anything about this particular place or these particular people besides you?" He looked around the small room, receiving shakes of the head or shrugs from each. Flynn responded mechanically, eyes only for Lucy, trying to will her into looking at him, to tell him what was going on. She seemed completely unaware of his presence. 

"I mean, I know the period enough to talk with some people about some current events for like five minutes of polite conversation," Lucy offered. "But, the other places we've been were kicked into high gear, in the middle of some change, some dramatic moment – we hide more easily that way. People dismiss us because there's so much else going on so what's another weird dramatic thing with weird dramatic people?" She turned to Rufus, "We won't have that drama, that chaos to hide in. It's all domestic– these people will want to sit around, talk, go for walks, more talking, some dances that no one knows, and yet more talking over games we won't know how to play. We won't do well with that type of sustained attention. I mean, there's only so much mileage I can get out of us being Americans with Jay's Treaty under discussion." 

"With the what now?" Rufus asked. 

"Exactly," Lucy said pointedly and looked meaningfully at Christopher. 

"Unless," Jiya added, also turning to the older woman, "we have an expert to guide us." 

Rufus delivered the final blow, his eyes clear. "So, unless Wyatt turns out to be a Jane Austen fan-boy, it looks like you're our best bet. Let's get us some fancy clothes and get your ass on that lifeboat." 

Mason smiled, clearly liking the idea of Christopher being ordered around until Rufus turned to him as well. "And you too, Mason. We're going to need that fancy-ass accent of yours to open some doors." 

"What?!" he blustered and followed Rufus out the door to argue the point with him. 

"Wyatt and Jessica can hold things down here," Lucy noted and gathered the journal up with clipped, businesslike motions. 

"Wyatt can do what now?" Jessica said, peeking her head in. Lucy just grimaced as Christopher gently nudged Jessica out of the room. Flynn and Jiya left last, with Jiya having to tug on his sleeve to get him to finally quit the room. 

"Let go of me," Flynn demanded as Jiya hustled him out. 

Jiya dropped her hands immediately. "Get a grip, Flynn. Anger isn't going to fix this. Trust me. Whatever you did in there - " 

"I didn't do - " 

"Shut up!" she hissed, as Mason squawked his disappointment to an unflappable, supply-packing Rufus. "I don't want to hear it. Just fix it. Whatever you added onto her in there…make it right." Her voice softened. "I know how horrible it is to see, to know some parts of the future…and to have the present not conform…or conform too much. Accept what she's going through now, here. Ask what she wants, now and here." Her shoulders dropped and sadness etched itself on her face. 

"That's what I would want," she smiled humorlessly. 

"Jiya," he began. 

"Forget it, okay? We've got corsets to squeeze into." 

He reached for her arm this time, and pulled her into a hug. "Rufus is a fool," he whispered in her ear. "He claims to love you and then makes you into Cassandra so he won't feel guilty. You deserve better than that. He chooses not to see your pain because it makes him uncomfortable. You deserve better. I know it's not much, but I'm here for you anytime you want to talk about creepy visions of the future." He pulled back to smile at her. "You and Lucy are quite a pair. Amazing women who deserve better." She laughed a little, nodding and squeezed his hand before wading in to help Rufus force Mason's compliance. 

Lucy watched the scene from the infirmary door, a small, sad smile on her face, and she ran for her books on the Regency period to prep before the jump.

***


End file.
